The 10 Worst St. Louis Rams Games

10. 2/3/2002, Patriots 20, Rams 17. Critical turnovers and critical non-interpretation of defensive pass interference conspired to deny the 14-point-favorite Rams their place among the NFL's dynasties.

9. 12/11/2006: Bears 42, Rams 27. Special teams gave up two TDs to Devin Hester, but the true embarrassment of this nationally-televised game was the tens of thousands of Rams fans who gave up their tickets and handed the Super Bowl-bound Bears a ninth home game. For shame...

8. 9/29/1996: Big Dead 31, Rams 28 (OT). For St. Louis football fans, this was the first chance for revenge on Bill Bidwill, and revenge was really looking sweet. Eddie Kennison returned a punt for a TD, Tony Banks threw three TD bombs, and the Rams were up 28-14 heading into the 4th quarter. Unfortunately, the Ram defense proceeded to collapse in the Arizona heat. Funny, one Kent Graham didn't, passing 58 times for 366 yards and 4 TDs, including one to Frank Sanders with 0:11 left. The Big Dead didn't even need two minutes in overtime to put the Rams on ice. It would take until league realignment in 2002 for the Rams to finally knock off the city's former team.

7. 9/7/1997: Whiners 15, Rams 12. Though the Whiners' streak over the Rams was beginning to resemble Joe DiMaggio's, surely things would turn around this year. The week before, the Bucs put Jerry Rice out for the season, and Steve Young out of this game with a concussion, leaving one Jim Druckenmiller (or as we say in Missouri, Drunkenmiller) at the helm. Rookie Drunkenmiller was awful, 10-28-102 and 3 INTs, but Ram QB Tony Banks just about matched him, 9-24-123, and the Whiners came from behind for the win on a long Garrison Hearst TD run midway through the 4th quarter. AUUUGH!

6. 12/19/2004: Big Dead 31, Rams 7. Fighting for a playoff spot (which they did eventually get), the Rams soil themselves in the Arizona desert. Chris Chandler starts the game 1-for-6 for ONE yard and an INT before getting yanked, with the Rams in a 17-0 hole. Josh McCown had 199 passing yards at halftime, repeatedly gashing idiot blitzes from Larry Marmie with simple screen passes. The piece de resistance was a 20-yard run by 35-year-old Emmitt Smith on which SIX Rams blew tackles. Nice urgency, fellas!

5. 9/11/2005: Whiners 28, Rams 25. The beginning of the end of the Martz era. What didn't go wrong in this game? Chris Johnson stepped out of bounds with the opening kickoff at his own 1, then Martz wasted his first replay challenge of the season on the play. Somebody named Otis Amey returned a punt for a TD. The vaunted Ram offense settled for FOUR red-zone FGs, and with the Whiners trying to hand the game away late, Marc Bulger threw a pick that ended the game instead of giving Jeff Wilkins a 50-yard shot at tying it. And shockingly, 2005 would go mostly downhill from there - this was only the first of TWO losses by the playoff-aspirant Rams to a team that had gone 2-14 the year before.

4. 9/7/2008: Eagles 38, Rams 3. Every season opens with promise. Every team starts every season with hope. Coming off a 3-13 season, the 2008 Rams, and their fans, desperately needed both. Instead, we got a team completely unprepared and completely incompetent in every area of the game except punting. After the first game of the year, the game a coaching staff has the longest time to prepare for, it was clear the Scott Linehan Era would be over very, very soon.

3. 11/3/1996: Steelers 42, Rams 6. The only St. Louis Ram game I've ever quit watching. Jerome Bettis, a complete dog in St. Louis the year before, now decides he's "The Bus", running for 129 and 2 TDs. And right after the Rams "narrowed" the Steeler lead to 21-6, they gave up a kickoff return for a TD. Click!

2. 10/22/1995: Whiners 44, Rams 10. The inaugural edition of the St. Louis Rams was off to a surprising 4-1 start, and they were getting the Whiners at home with Elvis Grbac running the show instead of Steve Young. Madden and Summerall were actually in our fair city to cover the game. The torch is getting passed today, right? Wrong, as the Rams have a meltdown even bigger than the national stage they were on. The 49ers led 14-0 before even five game minutes had expired. Grbac threw for only 119 yards, but Chris Miller was a Chandleresque 8-for-22 with FOUR interceptions, burying the home team but good. Ken Norton Jr. returned two of those for TDs and began punching out the goal post. Dana Stubblefield declared that St. Louis' new team was still "the same old sorry-ass Rams." It would take four long years for the Rams to answer back for this one.

1. 11/9/2008: Jets 47, Rams 3. The worst game in franchise history by almost any measure. It was the worst a Rams team has been blown out. They set an NFL record by TRAILING 40-0 AT HALFTIME. Both Ram QBs who played had passer ratings under 34. The Jets averaged 10 yards a carry on the opening drive and barely slowed down. A team that briefly looked like it cared under interim coach Jim Haslett stopped, creating the low-water mark of the Rams' most-hopeless season in St. Louis.